The Fame Checker
by Wanderist
Summary: As if Gary giving Leaf the most useless "gift" on the planet after he loses to her isn't bad enough, poor Leaf has to endure an unpleasant surprise on the other side of the Nugget Bridge. Game verse and a different version of the events in Cerulean City. Pretty much intended to be Conflictshipping. Rated T for slight language and paranoia.


Hellos. Just so you know, I've written fanfiction before a long time ago, but never on here, and I've never really done an actual Pokemon shipping before and…I'll shut up now. The point is that this is a game-verse Oldrivalshipping/Conflictshipping one-shot and that this is also the first fanfic I'll ever write on here. This is more of a test than anything. Yay.

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The floor of the Nugget Bridge made a loud _THUD _as the feet of the brunette stomped angrily along the bridge with her faithful green dinosaur Ivysaur following at her side carefully. The girl walked quickly, holding a strange electric device in front of her. It had a small screen and a pokeball symbol next to it. Her long light brown hair swayed side to side as she walked along, and her bag, which had her name stitched into it, swayed back and forth for all to see. _Leaf. _

Ivysaur let out a concerned cry, and Leaf finally stopped in her tracks and calmed down just long enough to look at her partner reassuringly before glaring at the item again. Her emerald eyes, which usually glowed with happiness and excitement, now glowed with pure annoyance. Finally she couldn't stand to be quiet about it anymore.

"Damn that Gary!" She screamed. The sound echoed across the bridge. The trainers who were supposed to be waiting for a battle looked at her strangely, but Leaf didn't care. She kept rambling.

"What the hell is his problem? I beat him fair and square, he says I'M the one who's behind and that HE feels sorry for ME, and gives me this…this…thing!" She glared at the screen, which showed Misty and some stupid paragraph about her that nobody cares about. This was a joke, and Leaf knew it. She didn't care about this kind of stuff, and Gary Oak knew that. Ivysaur finally made another attempt to calm her down with a worried cry, which finally got Leaf's attention off the worthless device and back to reality. She sighed and gave the Pokemon a smile before putting the device back into her bag. She took a moment to question why she put it in her bag and didn't just throw it into the water below them, but didn't have time to think about it long before Ivysaur urged her to go on to the first trainer.

Defeating the trainers on the Nugget Bridge wasn't very hard. They were all pretty weak. After defeating the last kid, the boy warned Leaf that the final trainer was stronger than all of them, and she prayed to Arceus that they were right, because if this last trainer was as lame as the rest of the guys on this bridge, she'd be ashamed.

As Leaf stepped off the bridge, she saw a strange looking man wearing a cap staring intently at her. After a moment, he grinned at her like they were old friends. It was the most unnerving experience she'd had her entire journey so far.

"Well, hello there." The man's cheerfulness sent off warning alarms to Leaf, and she knew Ivysaur felt the same when he stepped in front of his trainer protectively. Strangely, the creeper looked amused by the Pokemon's willingness to defend his trainer instead of threatened.

"You look strong," the man commented. "I can see how you and your Pokemon made it."

Leaf wanted to tell the man that it wasn't hard and that he should try harder next time, but something told her not to anger this man, so she kept her mouth shut and simply nodded. The man took this as a sign to go on. He held out his hand to her and showed a small sphere of gold. It was apparently tradition at the Nugget Bridge for trainers who defeat everyone on the bridge to receive Nuggets like these from the final trainer waiting at the end. Leaf thought that she and Ivysaur would have to fight this man first before receiving theirs, but she ignored the alarms going off in her brain and took the sphere out of the man's hand and tried to keep a straight face despite how scared she was of this guy.

"Now, why don't we move on to more important matters?" The man asked, grinning like he'd won the lottery. Leaf was about to ask what the heck he was talking about, but the man kept going.

"We could use a skilled trainer like you. So, why don't I make you a deal? You join Team Rocket, and I won't have to silence you." The man said simply, as if he said this every day.

At the name _Team Rocket_, Leaf shuddered. She remembered her earlier encounters with them in and when that man's house was robbed, and when a man in a Pokemon Center mentioned that Team Rocket was attacking someone all the time. They were criminals. There was no way in hell Leaf would join them.

"No way." She said firmly. The man frowned as if such an offer being refused was new to him, but now that it had happened, he knew what he had to do.

"That's too bad." He sighed. He searched in his pocket for a pokeball and threw one towards Leaf and Ivysaur. When the capsule opened, it revealed a Zubat. Leaf cursed under her breath and fumbled for a pokeball to replace Ivysaur, who wouldn't do too well against a poison and flying type. However, the man was one step ahead of her and quickly ordered Zubat to use Mean Look, trapping Ivysaur in the battle.

The battle wasn't going too well for Leaf. Ivysaur was much stronger level wise, but his grass and poison type moves just didn't have much effect on Zubat thanks to his typing, while Zubat's poison and flying attacks did major damage to Ivysaur. The most damage Ivysaur could inflict was with tackle, and that still wasn't enough. Finally, Zubat hit Ivysaur with one final wing attack, and he fell to the ground at Leaf's feet.

"Ivysaur!" Leaf cried as she knelt down to check on her Pokemon. He was unable to battle, that was for sure. Leaf returned him to his pokeball and pulled out another one containing her Butterfree, but before she could throw it, the man's Zubat flew towards her at full speed, its mouth wide open to take a bit out of her. She screamed and ducked before the bat could take a bite out of her face. He flew over her and turned around for another try.

"Leaf!" A familiar voice cried just before Zubat could fly at her again. The girl turned around to see a boy with spiky brown hair with a Charmander running off the Nugget Bridge and towards her.

It was none other than Gary Oak.

"Gary?" Leaf gasped. She had no idea what he was doing here. Last time she saw him, he was walking in the opposite direction. How did he know to come here? Before she could ask him, he yelled at her to duck. Leaf didn't question it, just trusted him and ducked like he said. A second later, Zubat flew over her head again, only to be torched by Charmander's Ember as soon as he flew over her head.

The man from Team Rocket growled in frustration, obviously not liking the new odds. However, he looked like he still wanted to fight. At least until the police came running down the bridge toward them.

"Shit! You've got to be kidding! You brought the cops with you?" The man squealed, no longer the calm man from before. Gary just gave the Team Rocket recruiter his arrogant smirk and turned to help Leaf, who was still sitting on the ground.

"You okay?" He asked as he held a hand out for her. Leaf didn't know what to be more surprised about: Gary coming back for her when he knew she was in trouble, him asking her if she was okay and not making fun of her, holding out his hand out for her, or that concerned look on his face, as if he actually cared about her.

"Um, yeah, thanks." She finally managed as she took his hand and let him pull her off the ground.

The cops handcuffed the man from Team Rocket and took him back across the bridge. They then proceeded to question the trainers to make sure they weren't in on it. Gary and Leaf watched the interrogations for a while before walking back into the city.

"So… I'm glad you didn't throw my gift into the water." Gary told her as they walked toward the Pokemon Center. Leaf gave him a questioning look.

"How did you know I didn't?"

Gary just laughed in response and kept walking past the Pokemon Center, leaving Leaf there staring at his back as he walked away. After walking a few feet, he stopped and turned around to face her. He was wearing his usual smirk, but something about him looked serious to Leaf for some reason.

"Just don't lose it, okay?" And with that, he turned around and kept walking.

"Gary, wait! What did you do to that Fame Checker?" Leaf called after him.

"Smell ya later!" Gary responded, holding a hand in the air in some sort of wave as he gave her his usual goodbye.

After he was gone, Leaf took out the small device and stared at it, thinking of every possible thing Gary might have done to the thing.

"This is going into the very deepest pocket of my bag and is never going to see sunlight again…" She grumbled.

* * *

Lesson learned, folks: NEVER trust anything Gary gives you.

I apologize for any small mistakes I missed. If there's anything wrong let me know and if I can I shall fix it. Anyway, thanks for reading.

And I would like to thank one of my best friends for bringing out the inner insanity enough for me to do this.


End file.
